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Mother's Day cleanup at Highland Park and Edison's Mill Brook

A community-wide clean-up of Mill Brook banks and channels in Highland Park and Edison will bring locals together to celebrate Mother’s Day and do good on Sunday, May 12 from 10 a.m.-noon, with a picnic lunch in Johnson Park immediately afterwards.

A community-wide clean-up of Mill Brook banks and channels in Highland Park and Edison will bring locals together to celebrate Mother’s Day and do good on Sunday, May 12 from 10 a.m.-noon, with a picnic lunch in Johnson Park immediately afterwards.

Planned by the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership (LRWP), the multi-site venture aims to engage “people from all over who want to do service, and people who have never done service before,” said LRWP founder and president Heather Fenyk during a recent team meeting. “We love having kids involved, and since this is a Mother’s Day clean-up, we hope mothers will say, ‘I want to go out and do a clean-up, so you’ll be doing what I want to do!'”

Main Clean-up Locales

“Team John Marshall Elementary School will work its way through wooded areas of Mill Brook between the school and the ball fields. Many will be high school students, but volunteers of all ages are welcome,” said a cleanup principal, LRWP Streamkeeper Susan Edmunds.

Rutgers MLA candidate Jillian Dorsey collecting data about Mill Brook that prepared the way for the Partnership’s May 12th Mill Brook clean-up.(Photo: ~Courtesy of Jillian Dorsey)

Team Johnson Park will appeal to “folks who like to muscle through things.” But “anyone with a sharp eye for trash will be welcome, including families with young children,” added Fenyk.

In addition, several small “Bridge & Culvert” teams will be formed during check-in at Grove 2.

Participants staying on for the picnic should bring their own outdoor-food favorites and water to supplement offerings by invited local restaurants.

To sign-up ahead of time, fill out the online at bit.ly/2H2RX2l. Check-in at your site at 10:00 a.m. on May 12 to pick up instructions, gloves and bags. Last minute registration will be available at Johnson Park, Grove 2. For questions or food donations, email the WMA 9 watershed ambassador at wsamb@raritanbasin.org.

Co-sponsoring organizations partnering with the LRWP are the Reformed Church of Highland Park, the Edison Environmental Commission, the Middlesex County Parks & Recreation Conservation Corps, AmeriCorps Watershed Ambassador Von Scully, Sustainable Highland Park, the Highland Park Ecology and Environmental Group, the Highland Park High School Environmental Club, and the Borough of Highland Park.

“The Lower Raritan Watershed Project's Mill Brook Cleanup on Sunday, May 12th is a perfect fit for Highland Park,” said borough administrator Teri Jover. In one of the endeavors that evince the town’s “passion for conserving the environment,” the borough council passed a 'bring your own bag' ordinance in February to reduce the presence of non-recyclable plastics in our waterways and waste streams.

Edmunds, conducting research in a quiet section of Mill Brook above River Road in Highland Park for her story map, Mill Brook: Portrait of an Urban Stream.(Photo: ~Courtesy of Michele Bakacs)

New LRWP homeowners’ guide to watershed stewardship

For participants looking to learn more, "The Lower Raritan Watershed: A Resident’s Guide to Stewardship" created by Rutgers Master’s candidate Jillian Dorsey as the third part of her thesis in landscape architecture will make for “a nice full story about Mill Brook, along with the story map that Susan developed as a project within Rutgers’ Environmental Stewards Program," said Fenyk.

“The whole idea was to produce a guide for homeowners within in the Lower Raritan watershed who have streams that flow through their backyards to help them become better stewards and care for these streams,” she said.

How one Highland Park homeowner became LRWP Streamkeeper

Edmunds’ love affair with Mill Brook began 30 years ago when she and her husband moved into a home in Highland Park with a branch of the stream running across their backyard. For the next 25 years, the couple worried about erosion of the steep banks beside their house, appealing in vain to local, state and federal agencies, which they discovered, make no provisions for homeowners with such problems, said Edmunds.

Searching elsewhere for solutions, she began going to streambank remediation conferences — at one, luckily meeting Fenyk, who introduced her to County Agent Michele Bakacs, the director of Rutgers’ Environmental Stewards Program.

“As soon as I found out about it, I signed up,” said Edmunds. Her "Mill Brook: Portrait of an Urban Stream" story map now on the LRWP website began as a certification project within the steward’s program.

Footbridge over Mill Brook in Johnson Park, near the railroad trestle.(Photo: ~Courtesy of S. Edmunds)

“There are some terribly messy places on Mill Brook,” she said. “As I was going around doing my photographing, whenever I came to a place that was clean, I felt happy and safe, so I could enjoy the beauty of the brook.”

After completing it, “some stay on and volunteer for programs within the Middlesex County Extension Program, others join organizations like the Lower Raritan Watershed Partnership. People often begin with a project that seems small, and it just keeps snowballing,” said Bakacs.

“Going on a clean-up where any trash is a treasure is a great start, and so much fun, I want people to have that experience,” said Edmunds.

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